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A group of 15 students along with their teacher are claiming a new paper folding record. The group claims to have folded (in the same direction) 13,000 feet of toilet paper in half 13 times, breaking the old 2002 record of 12 times. From the article: "[teacher] Tanton has been leading students from St. Mark's on attempts to break the record for five years. But after several failed attempts, Tanton asked the MIT origami club, OrigaMIT, to help him and his students get access to MIT's Infinite Corridor."

But I don't see a requirement that it stand at all, merely that it is folded. Which it is.

2^13 is 8192 layers.

The really interesting thing is that it doesn't tear. There's stretching and compressing involved in folding things, and toilet paper isn't all that structurally sound. Their folding method seems to make it flow properly to keep the stresses from damaging it.

I don't like it because MIT is just trying to outshine a girl in high school. Britney Gallivan is the one who came up with the equations and broke the old stigma that a paper can only be folded in half 7 times.

Screw MIT and their infinite budget for media attention. Her equations showed you can indeed have more folds if your paper is long and thin enough. This 'professor' needs to find something more worthwhile to do besides take away from a kid who had a great discovery.

This has very little to do with MIT. They just used a 825-foot "infinite" hallway that connects many of MIT's main buildings. The folding was done by high school students, under guidance of their teacher.

And so what if it was MIT? No adult should ever try to do something better than a high school student? Do we need to worry about hurting the feelings of a precious snowflake?

Gallivan's work is great. I certainly wasn't doing anything on that level at that age. But that doesn't mean no one should ever

I have them all beat. Just take their 8192 layers and repeat that an infinite number of times, taping one layer at the end of each to the next bundle of 8192 layers. Infinite-ply toilet paper -- for the really tough jobs!

Think about that again. The rule is to fold a single, continuous piece of paper in half each time. You can only attach the ends of the two separate sets of folds, and then they aren't folded in half together, they're just stacked on top of each other. Not the same thing at all, or just rolling the toilet paper on a cardboard tube until it's the diameter of the universe would count as folding it.

I'm thinking that the first fold of the 13 total folds created a sheet with 2 layers, so the additional 12 folds would yield 2^12 or 4096 total layers. Not sure where they came up with 6000 in the article.
As to length, 15000 feet halved 13 times would be 1.83 feet, but the depth of the folds eats up a lot of length, which is why their bundle really couldn't fold that 13th time.

That brings up an interesting question concerning steel folding, like what was done with japanese swords.

If you were to say, take a bar of copper 10 ft x 1" x 1/4", and bend it in the middle (fold it) and then when it was folded, beat it out so its back to 10' x 1" x 1/4", and repeat the process several times, you could theoretically get a lot more than 13 folds out of it. When you were done each layer would be like gold leaf though.

The thickness of the material is ultimately what causes problems with folding, which is why TP is a good choice. (the cheap stuff is really thin, and it is somewhat stretchable) But you can get metal down to an atom or three thick without TOO much work. (as with gold leaf)

I wonder if this would count?

I also wonder also how they obtained a single roll of TP that long, or did they have to patch together several rolls? I'm not talking about the little ones at home, I'm assuming they use the big (12" or so?) rolls used in public restrooms. Still, I don't think one of those would be enough, that looked like 3 or 4 of those rolls worth of TP, but maybe that was just the effect of it getting uncompressed and air into it that fluffed it up?

That brings up an interesting question concerning steel folding, like what was done with japanese swords.

There are two reasons why Japanese swords are traditionally made from folded steel. Firstly, folding is used to purify the steel. With every fold sparks fly and impurities are burned from the metal. This was a very effective technique considering how old it is. But the resulting steel was still of much lower quality then what is mass produced today.

The second reason for folding the steel was to distribute carbon throughout the metal. After folding the steel 10 to 20 times to purify it, they would do

It's really only the outside layer that matters. If you can go from the top on that layer to the innermost two layers from that layer to the bottom outside layer, all the other layers must be included in the fold.

Unless you mean the 2^n layers are parallel to each other along a single bisector. That might take a little more mashing, but I don't see it as too far from where they are.

I don't think they have a true 13th fold, as definded by the previous record holder:

"For a sheet to be considered folded n times it must be convincingly documented and independently verified that (2n) unique layers are in a straight line. Sections that do not meet these criteria are not counted as a part of the folded section. "http://pomonahistorical.org/12times.htm [pomonahistorical.org]

I don't think they have a true 13th fold, as definded by the previous record holder:

"For a sheet to be considered folded n times it must be convincingly documented and independently verified that (2n) unique layers are in a straight line. Sections that do not meet these criteria are not counted as a part of the folded section. "http://pomonahistorical.org/12times.htm [pomonahistorical.org]

You do realize by that definition, a "fold" just means rotating a section of paper some distance around an axis across the width of the paper? The 13th fold could be one degree.

If we add to the definition that the straight line must be perpendicular to each of the 2n layers, then the fold would have to go 180 degrees.

The article doesn't where they got one continuous strip of TP 13,000 feet long. Did they use multiple rolls attached together?
As far a standing on it's own, a small amount of glue every now and then should help with that.

A thousand page book on my self is about 3 inches thick. If the TP is half the thickness of book paper, their block should be about 12 inches talk, 18 inches long and as wide as the TP they used.

After four hours of sometimes tedious toiling with the single-ply bathroom tissue that Tanton bought online at ToiletPaperWorld.com, he said he and the students from St. Mark's finally folded the paper a 13th time.

Apparently the toilet paper industry was unaffected by the dotcom burst.

After four hours of sometimes tedious toiling with the single-ply bathroom tissue that Tanton bought online at ToiletPaperWorld.com, he said he and the students from St. Mark's finally folded the paper a 13th time.

Apparently the toilet paper industry was unaffected by the dotcom burst.

Shitty companies have a way of surviving. Now I know its literally true.

Very good question. The mentioned ToiletPaperWorld.com link has at best, 4,000 foot rolls. There must be some products not offered on the web site -OR- they got away with gluing/taping/bonding multiple rolls together.http://www.toiletpaperworld.com/product.aspx?strSku=APM [toiletpaperworld.com] 740GREEN

Seeing the teacher has been trying this for 5 years, I wonder if any of his previous students became students at MIT, hence the connection? Not that one is needed, but would be an interesting side story.

Can I be the first to say that? Is this what people are aspiring to these days? Toilet paper folding records??? Is there some complex math or interesting folding dynamics involved here? What's the hook? Or are they just a bunch of obsessive compulsive retards?

Well, it's really a paper folding record that happened to use toilet paper. These people have a weird hobby, but I have difficulty faulting them when MMOs eat up billions of person-hours yearly (my own estimate). Calling them "obsessive compulsive retards" is ignorant and needlessly insulting.

A local high school (albeit a private boarding type of one) used connections they had with college students in a paper folding club to make use of the club's access to MIT buildings (in this case, a really long hallway). This has nothing to do with the college's academic programs but rather with its social programs.

Some internet users (albeit at least one of them an Anonymous Coward) hijacked a thread about paper folding to pass judgement on college degrees, college academic programs and similar topics. This has nothing to do with social programs

Yeah, what kind of jackass would want to pursue knowledge just for the sake of knowledge? They should have some kind of institution where those wackos are all segregated so that they can do their useless research in peace and not be a nuisance to the rest of us conscientious workers.

Well, for one, the high school students in question now have an excellent grasp of just how fast exponential increases really can get. You'd think that toilet paper is pretty thin, right? And folding it in half doesn't really make a noteworthy increase in thickness, it's still really thin - but do it again, and you've got 8 sheets thickness, then 16, then 32, 64, 128, and so on, until you've got 2^13 sheets thickness of toilet paper, just from folding it in half, and suddenly it's not so thin. For people who've been doing advanced math most of their lives, that's not much of a realization, but for kids who are just learning about things like that, it's an eye opener.

Is that why the more economic classes you take the more likely you are to be a libertarian?

You've got the causality reversed. Those smart and informed enough to see through capitalism know that what's taught in the typical economics class is as disconnected from the reality of human labor and natural resources being used to meet human wants and needs as an astrology class is from the reality of cosmology; while those naive enough to subscribe to the inherently contradictory theory of "libertarian capitalism

That's like saying Christians never take a biology class because they are smart enough to see through the disconnected reality of evolution. Economics has inherently nothing to do with the environment and there is nothing to say that there can't be a capitalistic society that is environmentally friendly, as such things are based in social desire, behavior and structure and not in economics. Economics is very much a science with historical precedence and consistency.

I can't say the same for myself. I didn't subscribe to libertarian ideals until after I learned more about economics and historical precedent with foreign policy. Obviously there are still Democrats and Republicans who have interest in economics, or there wouldn't be such contrasting opinions on the subject matter. Unfortunately this study didn't survey the students before and after, but I would note that the more economic classes a student took the more likely they were to be libertarians, so I would sugge

In my experience, the MO for libertarians is that they, without fail, think they are smarter than *everyone* else around them, *particularly* non-libertarians.

I had one that I was in a discussion with; he had never heard of high frequency trading, and I was explaining why I thought it was such a worthless money-extraction scheme. Even though this douchebag had never even heard of HFT before, he sat there and told me how I was wrong, and that it was a good thing, and that I just hated profit.

It would have been easier to accomplish using pennies and requiring the students to provide them. Pair the students up and require them to start with 1 penny and double the money back and forth X number of times..01 * 2^13 = $81.92. Maybe to 2^10 ($10.24) is a little more realistic for high school students. At the end, pool the money and have a pizza party.

I'd be willing to bet that the goal of the exercise wasn't to teach the students anything. It was to get the teachers name into the record books. F

Well, for one, the high school students in question now have an excellent grasp of just how fast exponential increases really can get. You'd think that toilet paper is pretty thin, right? And folding it in half doesn't really make a noteworthy increase in thickness,

Now you have 2 sheets thickness

it's still really thin - but do it again, and you've got 8 sheets thickness

Now you should have 4 sheets thickness, not 8

, then 16, then 32, 64, 128, and so on, until you've got 2^13 sheets thickness of toilet paper, just from folding it in half, and suddenly it's not so thin. For people who've been doing advanced math most of their lives, that's not much of a realization, but for kids who are just learning about things like that, it's an eye opener.

Would have worked better for that if they'd used the TP with diploma-print on it.

My first thought was that you were excessively bitter or something, but then I remembered how I felt about it myself when I walked away from university without paying for the diploma I'd finished the requirements for, because having it and telling local employers I had it would have actively harmed my job prospects at the time. The local employers had already all been burned by the idiots who cheated their way through a comp.s